Salary Negotiation Highlight Reel

Hello my fellow negotiators.

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Listener share that after listening to our podcast, she was able to negotiate a $53,000 raise. And you know what I told her? Where is my commission? Just kidding. But the real story is this was after years of being too afraid to negotiate. But after listening to a couple of episodes on Salary Negotiation, she felt equipped with with the confidence and tools to ask for the payment she deserved. And that, my friends, is the power of negotiation. And through a subscription to our new membership community Negotiate Anything Premium, we're taking that power to the next level. With customized playlists based on our most popular topics, you'll be able to find the episodes you're looking for much faster and much easier. A tool that comes in handy as you're getting ready to prepare for an important negotiation. Even I find myself asking which episode should I listen to before heading into a high stakes negotiation? And you might be saying, but Kwame, you're the ones having the conversations. But I forget. So I listen to the episodes multiple times. Okay, now here's the thing about Negotiate Anything Premium. It'll allow you to dive deeper into the specific situations you're facing, whether it's a salary negotiation, an important business meeting, or an emotional conversation with a loved one. Bonus for you. In addition to ad free and extended episodes, Premium members will have exclusive access to solo episodes and insights from yours truly. And as you know, it will be very dry and very boring. Because I have no sense of humor and this is something that you all have been asking for. I'll also be offering personalized answers to some of your most burning questions through our Ask Me Anything feature. If you've been enjoying our traditional feedback, imagine the value a premium subscription can offer. I've felt the benefit of negotiation firsthand and it is life changing. Many of you don't know this, but my journey has taken me from people pleaser to a confident negotiator. Because I was able to do two simple things through negotiation. I was able to first change my mindset and then I was able to improve my skill set. And that is what will happen for you when you join Premium. I've already seen the impact of these skills and the power of this model not only in my own life, but also in the lives and careers of our clients all around the world. My family, my friends, and our team here at A&I, and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Now, are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Check the link in the show notes to learn more. I'm excited to continue the conversation. I'll catch you later.

So, on the surface, salary negotiation seems like it's just a numbers game. How can I get the most salary out of this organization that just offered me a job or will hopefully be offering me a job and let me try and figure out that numbers game. However, underneath the surface, there's so many factors that impact how we show up to that conversation. And when I talk to job seekers, the number one factor that comes up probably 9, 95, 98% of the time is confidence or lack of confidence. People say, oh, I don't have the confidence, Kyle, to ask for 40,000 more dollars than what they already offered me. Oh my gosh, this is meta or Amazon or some hypergrowth startup. I'm scared to go ask for more money. And confidence keeps coming up. So today, hopefully we can talk about a few ways people can boost their confidence as they go into the salary negotiation conversations.

I love that.

This is great.

Before we get into that again, I want to explore a little bit behind some of the perspectives that might hold people back. When you think about the mindsets that hold people back and make it tough for them to negotiate effectively and advocate for themselves, what are some of the patterns that you're seeing?

A lot of people, when they go into salary negotiation, they have these ideas around money. When it comes to money, they're like, oh, I don't think I'm worth this amount of money. They say, I've always made X dollars and now this is 50 dol. 50 or 100 more than I've made before. And people feel like, oh, that's already good enough. I shouldn't negotiate more. And there's these negative feelings or perceptions people have around money. It can be difficult to move past that. And people connect money to their worth. I'm worth X amount of dollars, but not Y amount of dollars. And there's the stickiness that comes in. And we, when I come in, I try and say, let's disconnect that and not say, here's what you're worth. The money is not your worth. It's simply an exchange of energy. You're showing up and delivering a certain amount of energy to the organization. What energy can they provide back in regard to money? And that can be helpful for some people to disconnect from, oh, this is my worth. No, it's not. It's just an energy transition between you and that organization.

Where should we start? What, what would you say is the number one mistake that you see people make in these conversations about compensation.

If I had to pick the first one, I would say, don't think, take things personally. When people take things personally, that's one of the biggest mistakes. And you really have to look at it as a business problem that you're trying to solve collaboratively. Right. I mean, this is not. It's not about you. And the way that companies pay people really isn't about the person at all. It's how much they value the work that you'll be doing for them. And so it's normal that different kinds of companies might value that work differently. And so you just have to remember that it's really a statement on the work and not a statement on you as a person. And it's really hard to get that emotional distance. But when you can, you can be.

A lot more effective 100%. Because if you start taking things personally, then you're losing that perspective. And then you're probably respond emotionally. And oftentimes our emotional responses are not the appropriate responses for the negotiation. They might feel good in the moment. Don't get me wrong, they feel great, but. But then you have that or it might feel terrible.

I mean, that's the thing.

That's the thing. You're kind of don't know. It's random in that situation. Right. Because you. Sometimes the emotional response can. Can feel good. It could be cathartic in the moment, and then the ramifications are down the road. Or maybe it feels bad in the moment too. Or maybe you get lucky.

Yeah.

And so I think it's really important to recognize the difference between an emotional thought and a rational thought in the moment. And so it's easy for us to just say, okay, good, next one. We won't take things personally. On to the next idea. But it's easier said than done. Right. So what advice do you have for people who say, well, okay, thank you, but it's hard for me not to take things personally. How do I actually do that?

Well, and it is hard for everybody, but if you can really recognize the fact that this is. It's a business problem that you're trying to solve, that's one way. You know, I also advise my clients to think about negotiating on behalf of somebody that they like, but maybe not their super best friend, but somebody that they think is great, you know, so if I were negotiating on behalf of you, you know, I would advocate for you, I would be firm, but. And I would want a great outcome for you. But it's not. It doesn't impact me in quite as personal way. And I think that's the mindset that if you can get into that, it can be really generative 100%.

And so I think about it, for me as a lawyer, I think about the times when I was representing clients. It's an interesting phenomenon because they can say things that are offensive about the situation. But since I have that distance, I can handle myself. I can think about several times in negotiations where I was with my client and they said something that I knew that they would take personally, and I was just texting them, don't say anything. Don't say anything. Just let me handle this, right? Because I have that objectivity, I have that distance. And it is a really powerful mental trick you can play on yourself to say, all right, I'm not Kwame, but I'm going to negotiate on behalf of Kwame, right? Or Whitney, my wife, or my brother Kobe, or whoever it happens to be. But I put that other person, I kind of other myself in that situation. Gives a lot of perspective.

One thing I want to say, they have not always being a negotiator, right? I have stories of times where I never negotiated. And then at the end, I would bank my head. I'm like, what happened to you? Right. And I worked at the World bank, and I did all those negotiations. But before I get to that level where I could negotiate being around the table as the lawyer representing the World Bank, I was that young immigrant who had to accept the job and maybe negotiate the salary. I didn't do that. And then as time passed, I started to realize that, hey, I think I made a big mistake. But I'll tell you a little bit about a story I'm still kind of ashamed about, because that's when I moved to the United States. And then I accepted the job at the World bank in 2012. And when the job offer came, I just accepted. And I didn't even take the time to read all the small things in the offer. I was just so excited. I had this salary. I've never had such a salary before. And, you know, the job offer was coming from the World Bank. I thought I was just so lucky. And then what I realized a few weeks in the job was that my colleagues who came with me at the same time as legal associate, they had been in the country for some time, and some of them were American, and they were thinking that the salary that we're getting was not enough considering the Market, Washington, D.C. and also considering the fact that we were graduates from law Schools, right? They call us. We sat around the table around lunch, and we're talking about our salaries. They're like, we have to figure a way to go to the legal associate manager to talk about this situation. And I remember telling them, guys, I think we should kind of slow down a little bit. We must consider ourselves lucky to be here today because there are a lot of people out there trying to be in our places. They just looked at each other and kind of like, what is he talking about? I guess, but that's. I've never really talked about it again with them, but. And that just came from the fact that I was young, inexperienced, and I just accepted a job as at a prestigious organization. But I never really took the time to understand what was in there, what should I should. I had negotiated and I never did that. But so today, when I write a book like that, I also talk about those type of stories. And then I want to hope that people who are reading the book today are going to understand that when you accept a job, you want to be able to negotiate. Right? Negotiation is not just looking at how much money am I making at the end of the pay period. There are a lot of things that you have to take into consideration, especially as an immigrant, for example, you want to look at, where am I going to be living? What's the cost of living in that area? And then, of course, you also want to be looking at what is the compensation package. Right. So things like that are things that I think I would be like. I would like to be able to talk about and share with others so that they understand that being where I am today, having worked at the World bank, doesn't mean that, you know, it's always been like that in terms of negotiations. Right.

It makes a lot of sense. And I think there's a lot of wisdom in this that we can all learn from. Right. And so the first thing is the power of mindset. Because the mindset that your colleagues had at that time, they said, listen, I know my value, and my value is more than what I'm currently earning, and that is compelling me to then ask for more. And then for you, at that point, this was the first job that you got in the States. It was a prestigious job at the World bank, not just the World Bank.

Right.

And so you say, I am quite happy where I am, and I don't want to risk this position. I've recognized that this is a mindset that happens a lot with immigrants, happens a lot with minorities, and especially if you are somebody who you might be a first generation college student or somebody who is really blazing the trail for your family or community, doing something new compared to everybody else that, you know, you're doing so much better. I am happy. I don't want to risk it. And so we have to understand that mindset in order to overcome it.

It.

Right. We have to think differently about it and then we can move forward. But if you really don't know that there is another way to think, then you wouldn't even know that a change needs to be made.

Yeah, that's true. That's very true. So there is that lack of knowledge. Right. The first aspect of it. And the other one is a challenge that I think is just has to do with maybe feeling maybe a little bit insecure, knowing where you come from and knowing what you're looking at. You don't have the time to definitely say, hey, let me stop a little bit and think about this. Is this fair or is it not fair? No, people don't think about them. When the job comes, the job offer comes, they click yes without reading everything. And what I'm trying to tell people is that you have, especially as an immigrant and being in those situations, there's a lot going in your mind. It could be that your papers depend on that job offer and you don't have the time to look. You just want that paper and you forget that you can actually negotiate to get better or maybe to get a better offer. Right. But people don't always have the time to think about it. So that challenge and also thinking that they may have to engage in some form of difficult conversation because that's what it is. How are you going to start from your position asking your employer to give you more money? When you have other issues like getting your paper renewed, you end up getting a job and starting supporting your families back home. And here you say I should negotiate. So they are afraid, they don't want to engage in that.

I've got a quick story for you. So I was at this keynote and I talked to a listener and he said, kwame, I love the podcast, but my favorite part, man, I love those commercials. And I said, I don't think this is a true story. And now let me tell you about Negotiate Anything Premium, where you can listen to your favorite Negotiate Anything episodes ad free. With a subscription to Premium, you can get access to more insights from your favorite experts and add free free listening and extended episodes. Bonus, you'll also get access to exclusive episodes and personalized advice from yours truly. If you've been looking for an easy and affordable way to level up your skills and negotiate more of the best things in life. Join our premium community now for that gentleman in that fictional story. This ads for you and for the rest of you. I'll see you in premium.

Let's talk about salary expectations. What do we need to know?

So I think as a recruiter, probably about 30% of the conversations that I have are with people who don't have a predetermined compensation expectation when I speak with them. And that makes it really difficult to move forward in the process. In fact, a lot of companies won't even present your resume to a hiring manager until you give them your compensation expectation. And so there are a few tactics that you can use to go in and figure out what your target comp is. First, of course, you want to know your annual budget that you need to actually spend. That's going to be your bare minimum, right? Because the last thing you want to do is take a role that means that that you can't pay the bills. And then once you've determined your bottom line minimum, you want to go in and determine your target industry and your top two to three target job titles. And you want to go to places like glassdoor and salary.com and LinkedIn and research what the compensation levels are for those job titles. And if the compound compensation does not align with your minimum expectation, you need to pick a new industry and a new job title and then redo your research until you get there. And then you also need to compare it with where you were at previously if you were laid off or where you're at in your current job, and make sure that it's at least as much or more. Because unless you're going from the public school sector to, say, the nonprofit sector, you should always be advancing yourself in that way.

Right now, women on average make around 79 cents on a dollar compared to non Hispanic white male women of color actually make significantly less. So if we go state by state, the numbers can be alarming. But in general, black women have to work until March to make what a white man earned in the previous year. African American women have to work until August, Latino women September, and the Native American women, November. So when you look at the wage gap, you're looking at women working almost a full year for free to earn what a man made in that same time frame. It's really more complex than just saying, oh, they make less. Because when you look at traditional job roles and social roles that the women carry, women have to take off work to give birth to a kid, whereas a man doesn't. And so women are penalized for leaving the workforce for a certain amount of time, and they're not paid for that time. So when they reenter the workforce, there is a gap in their work history. So when women and men start off right out of college, they're typically earning close to the same amount. But as they get older, as women get older, they earn less. On the other side of that spectrum, women are typically the caregivers for families. So when parents are ailing and things like that, it's typically the woman who opts out of the workforce. And so there again we see another component of the wage gap because women are not engaged in the workforce because they're caring for families, which is essential work. So it's a really, really complex issue. But that's just an overview of what the wage gap is.

Wow.

And that's for people who are coming in and doing the same job. So the women are paid less for the exact same work than similar situation.

Wow, that's crazy, right?

So I like getting niche with research. I mean, I love Glassdoor or PayScale or Salary.com or LinkedIn, but these tend to just have high level salaries and you want to get as niche as possible when you're researching salary gallery, when you have an offer or a potential offer. So I primarily work with people in tech Silicon Valley. I t these really niche areas. So my favorite is Team Blind. This is an anonymous community board where you have to be registered with a company, have a company email to participate, but you don't have to have company email just to view people's answers. So it's kind of like a Reddit of sorts of shorts. Reddit and Glassdoor kind of had a baby. This would be Team Blind. And I like it because people will say, I just got an offer at Amazon, I'm an L6, here's my exact compensation package, my salary, my bonus, all of that. And I like it because then you can go in there and actually see the exact level, the exact team, the actual data was posted and get really live and relevant information. So I like starting with two Team Blind to see real case studies or examples of people who've gone offers. That's one of my favorites. And then once you've seen a few examples, I like zooming out a little and going to levels. FYI, this is again really helpful for tech and you can go and see companies across various titles and levels. And a lot of the people I work with will Often have competing offers from Amazon, Google, Microsoft. You know, you can see how these offers compare across these different organizations and levels because sometimes it can be tricky. Oh, I got this offer at Microsoft and this one at Google, then this one at Amazon. How do they compare with different RSUs and bonuses and salaries? So using kind of team blind case studies and then levels, FYI, and their data can be super helpful to compare across these organizations.

What advice do you have for people as, as it relates to finding ways to slow down so you can find that stability and respond appropriately?

Well, I think one of the most important tools that we have in salary negotiations is silence. So, you know, I recommend that when you make your requests, make a request and then be quiet. Don't try to jump in and fill that space because that's, we're kind of socialized to do that. It's like, oh, silence is bad. Silence is not bad. And you're not trying to trick the other person, but you want to give them a moment to process what you've just asked for and really allow them the opportunity to respond. If we just jump right in. Oh, well, if you can't do that, that's okay. That's one of the things that we commonly do in these situations. But silence can really help in giving you space. And just like in interview kind of situations, people don't expect you to be, you know, boom, boom, you know, talking over each other and rapid fire kind of sitcom, you know, deal. You know, that's, that's not normal. And so taking a moment, being deliberate. And if you need some time, ask for time. All of those things are absolutely okay to do in seller negotiations.

Absolutely, Absolutely. I tell you, one of the things I like to keep in mind is you're going to make more mistakes by going too fast than by going too slow in these difficult conversations. You know, the other thing is you can't put the toothpaste back in the tube. Once you say certain things, you can't pull it back, right?

Yeah.

Recently I conducted a short survey. I'm still receiving responses for that. Survey is a question I ask many immigrants. I've received more than 110 responses so far. Why did you negotiate your first salary when you move and you live, I mean, when you move to the country where you live today, and then if you didn't negotiate, why? Is it because you were lucky, you thought you were lucky to have the job, thankful to have the job? Or is it because you didn't know that salaries were negotiable? And many people respond and tell you, I mean, the majority of the responses that I've received is that I didn't negotiate because I was afraid of losing the offer. I was afraid, I didn't know that salary was negotiable. I was thankful for the job. And so when you hear things like that, you can talk that people, they don't have that mindset of I can negotiate my salary. They have a mindset of, thank God I get this job.

And so one of the things I always hear from people is that one of the most nerve wracking parts of the negotiation is when you're applying and then you see that little box that says salary expectation and they say, oh no. I remember Kwame talking about anchoring. I don't want to create a bad anchor. How do I handle that? I need to put a number. So what would you suggest?

You put $1 in that field. No recruiter is going to believe that you actually want to make $1 a year. But you don't ever want to list, say, $56,000 or $100,000 or $300,000 or $12 an hour just to have a recruiter look at that and not even open up your resume if it doesn't align with it. Because if they'd opened up your resume, they might see that you could add value in ways that they hadn't even thought of, or that you might be a really good fit for another opening at the company that hasn't been posted yet, even if you're not the perfect fit for the role that you applied to. And you have to be prepared though, because once you have that initial conversation with the recruiter, they're going to ask you in that conversation what your minimum salary expectation is. And you should be prepared because you've already already done all of the research that we just talked about to give them the low end of your range and also to give them a high end of your range. And so depending on your field, I give ranges of about $40,000. When, like a really wide range. When I quote my target compensation and I tell people that I do that when I'm talking to them on the phone, I say, I'm going to give you a really wide range here because I can completely understand that large companies and small companies and public companies and private companies can pay very different compensation levels. So I'm going to give you a really wide range here. And then as we go through the interview process and we learn more about each other and the value that we can add to each other's lives, we can narrow down that target further.

That is great, listeners. I hope you just, like, copy and paste that what you just said. I think that's a really great way to handle it because it's so reasonable. And you're not making the mistake of pricing yourself out of different opportunities. And you're not making the mistake of anchoring too low and then putting yourself in a bad position when you could have gotten more. And so that also helps us to understand what to do in the middle of the conversation if they say, oh, what do you hope to make? Or something even more sometimes nefarious. What did you make before?

Yeah, and there's two important points there. The first is there's an alternate tactic which is instead of you, as the person looking for a job, saying a number, you can turn it around and flip it back on them and say, well, can you tell me what your target compensation range is as a company? And then the real important thing that you have to do is be silent after that. And I know you cover this a lot in your podcast, Kwame, and it's something that's really hard for me to do. So I appreciate that you bring it up a lot. You need to be silent because recruiters are not used to being asked that question. And they will need to run through their head to, number one, maybe remember, because they're probably recruiting for 14 to 20 different roles, right? And they might not remember off the top of their head. And then number two, especially if they're with an agency, they might not have. They might have some clients where they're allowed to say the number and some clients where they're not allowed to say the number. And so they might have to kind of go to through that Rolodex in their head to figure it out. And then the other really important point is that it is only legal to ask for previous compensation information in certain states, and so many states, they're only allowed to ask you for your compensation expectation. They are not allowed to ask you to provide proof of your compensation history. It's illegal. And they're also not allowed to ask you where what you made in the last year. And so that's a really important piece of information to know. The other important piece of information is even if you get asked those questions, you're under no obligation to answer them, even if in a state where it's legal to ask. And So I recommend 100% of the time that you do not tell people what you were making at what you were making previously, because if you were at Google and you were making $300,000 a year doing something insane like director of, you know, senior director of engineering over there, then you know, if you're looking for something in the startup world, you're not going to have that same. You're going to be looking at something, you know, $150,000 lower maybe, and you don't want them to get nervous and think that you're priced out because of it. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. Yeah. You're spot on. And I think we have the opposite too, because a lot of people are switching jobs because they were unappreciated, because they weren't properly compensated. And then we inappropriately anchor ourselves where we say, oh yeah, at my last job I made 70,000 dol. But that's why we left.

It wasn't enough.

And so I agree. I think strategically finding really mindful ways of addressing this is really important. And it goes back to what you said, Robin, before, where you talked about role playing. This shouldn't be the first time you're going through this. You should have practiced this a number of times so it comes out smoothly. A lot of times we are caught off guard with really basic questions that we saw coming. We should have seen coming at least. What are some other mistakes people make at this stage when they're doing research?

What I find is people often don't get into the total compensation package. I have clients, they just show me that base number and sometimes people are like, oh, I'm leaving this non tech, non really well known company for Amazon and they're actually offering me a lower base salary. And then they forget to look at the RSUs, the relocation offering, the bonuses, the comp or the health care. And looking at the total package is really important. And looking both now and then in the future, in 3, 5, 10 years as their stocks grow. And you want to ask yourself what's important to you? So when you're thinking of your salary expectations, I can encourage people to really write out what's important. Do you need cash now? Are you in it for the long run? Is health care important? Are you looking into IVF and does the company pay for that? Really looking at all of those benefits and what's important instead of the mistake of simply looking at your base salary and then stopping there.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Now, before you sign off, I have something to tell you that I've never told you before. Just kidding. I've told you before, but you should listen to it again. I want you to know about negotiate anything, premium Imagine all of the things that you love about our traditional feed, plus so much more. I know you like our traditional feed because you're at the end of the episode and with Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll get more bonus content you've been asking for, more of the expert insights that you can't get anywhere else and more exclusive behind the scenes access into every conversation. Are you ready to get more of what you want out of your life, career and every conversation? With Negotiate Anything Premium, you'll have access to more high level, custom designed content and insights giving you the tools you need to negotiate higher salaries, better deals and better relationships in your life and career. Once I had a listener share that Negotiate Anything helped her to negotiate a $53,000 raise. Could this be you? What would that mean for you? Your life? I've seen firsthand the impact this model has had on my life and the lives of my corporate clients and I am confident that it can do the same for you. Are you ready to negotiate more of the best things in life? Click the link in the show notes to learn more. I'll catch you later.